This thesis examines the phonology and morphology of Turkish Sign Language (TiD). TiD, being considered a full-fledged language, has a rich phonological and morphological system, as other sign and spoken languages do. For the purpose of this
thesis / empirical data have been collected by means of a corpus study and various data elicitation tasks.
As a main result of my study of TiD phonology, I propose a complete inventory of handshapes as well as a set of unmarked handshapes which are unique to TiD. I discuss the interaction between TiD finger-spelling and TiD phonology showing that well-formedness conditions constrain the use of finger-spelled letters in lexical signs
I also discuss psycholinguistic evidence that sign languages have phonological systems, among them phonological effects on working memory and slips of the hand In the domain of TiD morphology, I investigate the three main morphological processes: inflection, derivation and compounding. Verb classification, plural properties, compounding, and reciprocals in TiD are investigated in detail. I argue that some TiD reciprocals use &ldquo / reciprocal neutral signing space&rdquo / whereby agreement becomes neutralized. TiD makes wide use of classifier constructions as for plural marking and for expressing movements of various human and non-human agents.
The thesis indicates that TiD has its own grammar, including rich and diverse systems of phonology, morphology, and classification. Thus, TiD may have had a long historical development. The comparison between TiD and other sign languages shows that TiD has exclusive linguistic properties. The comparison of TiD as a visual-gestural system and Turkish as an auditory-vocal system helps to better understand the impact of modality on language phonology and morphology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12609654/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| Creators | Kubus, Okan |
| Contributors | Hohenberger, Annette |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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